commbox West Africa

Media Capture in Africa and Latin America: Power and Resistance

Hayes Mawindi Mabweazara, Bethia Pearson (eds.)

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan (2025), xliii, 388 pp.

"How can current debates on ‘media capture’ be understood within the contexts of Africa and Latin America? This edited collection provides a nuanced exploration of media capture—a critical yet contested concept that examines and illuminates how media can become skewed in favour of power—whil ... more

Paying the costs of connection: Human rights of young adults in the digital age in Colombia, Ghana, Kenya and Vietnam

Warwick, Coventry (UK): Digital Health and Rights Project;University of Warwick, Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (2025), 63 pp.

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Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2025
Top Insights

Nic Newman, Richard Fletcher, Craig T. Robertson, Amy Ross Arguedas, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (eds.)

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2025), 170 pp.

"• Engagement with traditional media sources such as TV, print, and news websites continues to fall, while dependence on social media, video platforms, and online aggregators grows. This is particularly the case in the United States where polling overlapped with the first few weeks of the new Trum ... p administration. Social media news use was sharply up (+6pp) but there was no ‘Trump bump’ for traditional sources. • Personalities and influencers are, in some countries, playing a significant role in shaping public debates. One-fifth (22%) of our United States sample says they came across news or commentary from popular podcaster Joe Rogan in the week after the inauguration, including a disproportionate number of young men. In France, young news creator Hugo Travers (HugoDécrypte) reaches 22% of under-35s with content distributed mainly via YouTube and TikTok. Young influencers also play a significant role in many Asian countries, including Thailand. • News use across online platforms continues to fragment, with six online networks now reaching more than 10% weekly with news content, compared with just two a decade ago. Around a third of our global sample use Facebook (36%) and YouTube (30%) for news each week. Instagram (19%) and WhatsApp (19%) are used by around a fifth, while TikTok (16%) remains ahead of X at 12%. • Data show that usage of X for news is stable or increasing across many markets, with the biggest uplift in the United States (+8pp), Australia (+6pp), and Poland (+6pp). Since Elon Musk took over the network in 2022 many more right-leaning people, notably young men, have flocked to the network, while some progressive audiences have left or are using it less frequently. Rival networks like Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon are making little impact globally, with reach of 2% or less for news. • Changing platform strategies mean that video continues to grow in importance as a source of news. Across all markets the proportion consuming social video has grown from 52% in 2020 to 65% in 2025 and any video from 67% to 75%. In the Philippines, Thailand, Kenya, and India more people now say they prefer to watch the news rather than read it, further encouraging the shift to personality-led news creators. • Our survey also shows the importance of news podcasting in reaching younger, better-educated audiences. The United States has among the highest proportion (15%) accessing one or more podcasts in the last week, with many of these now filmed and distributed via video platforms such as YouTube and TikTok. By contrast, many northern European podcast markets remain dominated by public broadcasters or big legacy media companies and have been slower to adopt video versions. • TikTok is the fastest growing social and video network, adding a further 4pp across markets for news and reaching 49% of our online sample in Thailand (+10pp) and 40% in Malaysia (+9pp). But at the same time people in those markets see the network as one of the biggest threats when it comes to false or misleading information, along with Facebook. • Overall, over half our sample (58%) say they remain concerned about their ability to tell what is true from what is false when it comes to news online, a similar proportion to last year. Concern is highest in Africa (73%) and the United States (73%), with lowest levels in Western Europe (46%). • When it comes to underlying sources of false or misleading information, online influencers and personalities are seen as the biggest threat worldwide (47%), along with national politicians (47%). Concern about influencers is highest in African countries such as Nigeria (58%) and Kenya (59%), while politicians are considered the biggest threat in the United States (57%), Spain (57%), and much of Eastern Europe." (Executive summary, page 10-11) more

Technical study on telecommunication and ICT infrastructure data, costs and analysis in Nigeria

Geneva: ITU (2025), ix, 72 pp.

"This study analyses the costs of connecting to the Internet and providing Internet services in Nigeria for fibre-optic network connectivity, microwave links, mobile broadband cellular links, and cellular communications. The analysis has focused on the capital expenditure (capex) of telecommunicatio ... more

Recommendations for strengthening Mauritania´s resilience against disinformation. White paper

Bonn: Deutsche Welle DW Akademie (2025), 18 pp.

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Media Compass: A Companion to International Media Landscapes
Quick Overview

Aljosha Karim Schapals, Christian Pentzold (eds.)

Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell (2025), xxiii, 502 pp.

"In Media Compass: A Companion to International Media Landscapes, an international team of prominent scholars examines both long-term media systems and fluctuating trends in media usage around the world. Integrating country-specific summaries and cross-cutting studies of geopolitical regions, this i ... more

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Why do people spread fake news? Modelling the factors that influence social media users’ fake news sharing behaviour

Yan An, Yinan Huang, Ndonima Uhwe Danjuma, Oberiri Destiny Apuke, Elif Asude Tunca

Information Development, volume 41, issue 1 (2025), pp. 48-60

"This study modelled the factors that influence fake news spreading behaviour among social media users. To gather our data, we used an online survey to sample 385 social media users in Nigeria, using a chain referral approach. Smart PLS structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data (SEM ... more

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Examining Perceptions of ‘Peacebuildings’ in Radiophonic Debates: A Narrative Analysis of Media Talk in the Central African Republic

Fabíola Ortiz dos Santos

Journal of Radio & Audio Media (2025), 20 pp.

"Within [the radio debate programme) Patara, there was no explicit intention to reach a final conclusion on any given issue. The overall aim of the Ndeke Luka’s debate was to display arguments from different angles about certain specific matters without necessarily having to reach unanimous agreem ... more

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African Media and Communication: Foundational Conversations

Viola C. Milton, Winston Mano (eds.)

Oxford; New York: Routledge (2025), 380 pp.

"This book provides an important set of critical reflections from a selection of foundational scholars of African media and communication studies through biographical method. The book interrogates the center of mainstream academic scholarship by providing the foundational history and origins of an A ... more

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Camera in Times of Crisis: Focus on Africa

Kehinde Christopher Adewumi, Folasayo Enoch Olalere, Gambo Giles Duniya (eds.)

Bingley (UK): Emerald Publishing (2025), 208 pp.

"The presence of cameras, at the forefront of crises, either in the hands of journalists, bystanders or passers-by and sometimes even parties to the crises, has inspired multiple visual notations, commentaries and perspectives. Thus, efforts and resources are channelled towards documenting crises, t ... more

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Environmental Communication

Anabela Carvalho, Tarla Rai Peterson (eds.)

Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton (2024), xx, 600 pp.

"This handbook reviews extant research and offers critical summaries of key topics and issues in the field, enriched by authoritative analyses of specific cases and examples. It displays pluralism across a number of axes: epistemological, theoretical, geographical, cultural, and thematic. The first ... more

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Eyewitness Textures: User-Generated Content and Journalism in the Twenty-First Century

Michael Lithgow, Michèle Martin

Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press (2024), 365 pp.

"News consumers have come to expect and demand the unprecedented immediacy of experience and coverage of breaking news offered by photographs, video clips, audio recordings, tweets, commentary: content created by ordinary citizens. The use of user-generated content is a salient aspect of how journal ... more

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Sexual Harassment in the Nigerian Media Environment

Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye

In: Sexual Harassment and the Law in Africa

Furaha-Joy Sekai Saungweme; Carol Chi Ngang; Graham Towl (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2024), 19 pp.

"The media industry of Nigeria has been significantly impacted by sexual harassment and it has had a very negative effect on women media workers. One major issue which I will articulate in my chapter is the absence of an overarching media policy framework addressing sexual harassment with clear pena ... more

Radio and Women's Empowerment in Francophone West Africa

Emma Heywood

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan (2024), xiii, 239 pp.

"This open access book breaks new ground by examining the significant role played by radio in empowering women in three Francophone West African countries: Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. It examines the representation and perception of key themes broadcast by radio and associated with women's empower ... more

Mapping Lies in the Global Media Sphere

Tirse Erbaysal Filibeli, Melis Öneren Özbek (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2024), 224 pp.

"This volume addresses the concept of “(in)nocent lies” in the media – beyond the concept of misleading information online, this extends to a deliberate effort to spread misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories – and proposes a critical approach to tackle the issue in related i ... more

Next gen news: Understanding the audiences of 2030

Aliya Itzkowitz, Ben Whitelaw, Daisy Donald et al.

FT Strategies;Knight Lab (2024), 84 pp.

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Digital Platforms and the Global South: Reconfiguring Power Relations in the Cultural Industries

Philippe Bouquillion, Christine Ithurbide, Tristan Mattelart (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2024), xiii, 239 pp.

"This book addresses the issues raised by digital platforms in the Global South, with an emphasis on the cultural stakes involved. It brings together an interdisciplinary team of researchers - including political economists, socio-economists, geographers, media sociologists or anthropologists - who ... more